Relaxation response may reduce blood pressure by altering expression of a set of genes

The authors compared characteristics of 1,012 outpatients completing a 10-week behavioral medicine intervention with 300 outpatients who dropped out. They administered the Symptom Checklist-90 Revised (SCL-90R) before and after the program. Patients who completed the treatment, compared with dropouts, tended to be more highly educated, married, and gainfully employed. Their pretreatment scores on the SCL-90R were significantly lower than those of the dropouts on somatization, depressi […]

Social-evaluative stressors—experiences in which people feel they could be judged negatively—pose a major threat to adolescent mental health1,2,3 and can cause young people to disengage from stressful pursuits, resulting in missed opportunities to acquire valuable skills. Here we show that replicable benefits for the stress responses of adolescents can be achieved with a short (around 30-min), scalable 'synergistic mindsets' intervention. This intervention, which is a self-administere […]

A previous investigation has demonstrated that the practice of a meditational technique elicits a wakeful, hypometabolic state. Measurement of O2 consumption and CO2 elimination was made by sampling techniques; mean values of these parameters were calculated from 6–10 minute samples. The present study extends this investigation, using a recently developed method of continuous measurement of O2 consumption and CO2 elimination. Continuous measurement of these parameters permitted the de […]